Bank Robbing

Now I know how it feels to rob a bank. Or at least the first stage of the ‘operation’. One of the guys in our men’s group is getting married and so we arranged a ‘stag night’. But because we are all ‘New Men’, which in our case means old men with distinct liberal and spiritual tendencies, we were left with the challenge of creating an experience for our friend that didn’t involve demeaning women (dialling in a stripper) or consuming toxic quantities of alcohol. After a brainstorming session which included suggestions such as a surprise visit to the opera at Glyndebourne (how civilized but how effete!) we opted for more drama.

We turned up at his place in the evening with five of us sitting and lying on cushions in the back of an old van. One of us went in to his house, blindfolded him (with his wife-to-be’s bemused cooperation) and bundled him into the back of the van. We then drove off into the night to a remote campsite in the hills.

He was then walked to the site, underwent a brief but what-proved-to-be powerful ritual, and we then whiled the night away with reasonable quantities of booze, and some fantastic jamming with a kora, two guitars, harmonicas and voices.

Back in the truck we felt like we were on our way to a heist again. I remembered the time the police shot a man dead in London because he was carrying something that looked like a gun (it was in fact a table leg that he was carrying to attach to something – presumably a table). Dirk’s kora wrapped in its case looked like some lethal anti-tank weapon.